Winding down some more

I apologize that the length of time between blog posts has been so long recently. I've been less motivated to travel into Jinja after work and have instead been opting to spend more time with my host family as my internship comes to a close (in a week!).

On Saturday, our dad took us to his home village, located about 45 minutes west of Mbikko toward Kampala. We got to see the primary school he attended, the house his dad (also a tailor) built for he and his 13 siblings, the gravestones of his parents and probably 20 of his clan members (he belongs to the clan of "Mamba," a type of fish), and the plot of gardening land his dad left him when he died. We also met two of his cousins, one of which is the headmaster of a two-room schoolhouse made of mud and sticks. The village children who attend this school need only to pay the equivalent of $10 a year to attend, yet some of them can't even cover that and try to trade crops for tuition fees whenever possible. If they can't, they just drop out. We met some of the children who attend the school, and before we left, they gave us two pineapples (one for me and one for Daisy) because they felt so honored that a white person would visit their school. It was heartbreaking accepting the gift, but it just goes to show how important generosity is to the Ugandan people.

Also on Saturday, three episodes of The Bachelorette arrived in the mail, kindly provided by my USA mom. Katie and Ellen are also huge fans, so we had been anxiously anticipating its arrival. My Uganda dad was also eager to watch, due to how much I had been talking about the show. So on Saturday evening, Katie and Ellen brought over some dark chocolate and hibiscus wine they had purchased at an Mbikko winery and we all gathered around my family's TV to watch. My Uganda dad was hilarious. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, he likes to clarify everything. So with each commercial break, he would get his gossipy groove on and say things like, "OK, so Wes is the one we don't like right? He's a snake. And Reid ... now I think Reid and Jillian are very natural together. The conversation does not seem to come as easily for Jill and Kiptyn." For all those who care, he DID NOT approve of Ed's return. He thought it was insincere, and that he shouldn't have left in the first place if he was so crazy about her. It was odd seeing American commercials again. I never realized how many food commercials we have (which, needless to say, intensified my cravings for familiar food to a painful level). My group has been so American-food-hungry for the past week that we've started making lists of the food we're going to eat upon returning. On my list is Cap'n Crunch cereal, mozzarella sticks and a cherry limeade from Sonic, graham crackers and Funfetti frosting, and frozen grapes, to name a few. Apart from the food commercials, I was also taken aback by my reactions to some of the product advertisements. There was one in particular at which I cringed for fear of what my Uganda dad was thinking while watching: it was for a laundry sheet. This woman was saying the these new-and-improved laundry sheets made her life SO much easier because it cleaned her drying machine while de-fuzzing her clothes at the same time. She said the only thing it didn't do was fold her clothes. I couldn't help but think that, at that moment, my Uganda mom was probably out back scrubbing her clothes with a scentless bar of soap, wringing the clothes by hand, hanging them on the clothesline (thus putting them at risk for mango maggot infestation ... the little critters like to hatch in moist clothing), and then ironing them to kill the maggots. My dad didn't have a visible reaction, but it made me realize how cynical I'm becoming about where Americans (myself included) place their priorities.

Sunday I went bungee jumping over the Nile. My parents tagged along to "offer protection in case I got scared." My dad brought his camera and videoed the whole thing: my preparation, the jump, the post-jump interview. The jump itself was crazy. The company we went through was very legitimate and well-run, but I got a little nervous when all they did to strap me in was tie a towel around my ankles and attach a caribeaner (spelling?) to a braided elastic rope. Then as I'm edging myself to the end of the platform (all the time trying to avoid looking down), the professional guy points to my right and says, "Oh! Lucky you! You get to jump toward that crocodile!" Yep, camouflaged in the bushes at the base of a cliff was a crocodile. I didn't have a choice, because they counted down from 3 then pushed me. I screamed the loudest I've ever screamed, flapped my arms in all directions, and tried to catch my bearings as I bounced around while also trying to ignore the pounding headache I was getting due to blood rushing to my head. According to my dad, though, "My execution was pristine, in the way I jumped so gracefully off the platform." It was a fun fun day. It was amusing to see my parents so into it.

I have to go to dinner now...I will try and return either later tonight or sometime within the next couple days to finish this post and get everyone up-to-date!

Abby